View full sizeEd Murray/The Star-LedgerGov. Chris Christie speaks during a town hall meeting in Franklin Township, Somerset County this week.

TRENTON — Members of the state’s largest employee union won’t see raises until July 2013 under a tentative agreement reached last week with the Christie administration, the details of which were not made public until Friday.

The pact, which is supported by the leadership of the Communications Workers of America, must still be ratified by its 40,000 members.

Under the terms of the agreement, workers will receive no raises until July 2013, when their pay will be bumped 1 percent, with a 1.75 percent increase the next year. Workers at the top step of the pay scale will also get a $450 bonus next year.

The amount set aside for workers’ clothing allowances has been reduced from $750 to $550, and they will have to meet stricter criteria to get them.

Employees from the CWA have been working without a contract since their last one expired July 1, 2011. Negotiations over the new contract began in March of that year.

In a press release, a spokesman for Christie, Kevin Roberts, said the agreement "respects the best interest of New Jersey taxpayers while also protecting the rights of workers in a manner that is fair for all parties."

Union leaders told members this week that they pushed back against many of the state’s more stringent demands.

For instance, they said the Christie administration wanted workers to stop using e-mail accounts for union business, but the union leaders managed to keep that right with some modifications. And the state also wanted to drop the clothing allowances completely.

CWA leaders said they got the state to back down from changing workers’ hours to avoid paying overtime. In addition, they said that although the state wanted to eliminate all paid union leave, they negotiated it down to a 9 percent cut instead.

"It’s a lean contract in a lean economy, but it’s a robust contract when it comes to collective bargaining and enforceability and unity," said Hetty Rosenstein, state director of the CWA.

"We didn’t want to divide our people up. We ended up with an enforceable agreement."

The Christie administration also announced that it arrived at a new contract with the state’s correction and parole officers Friday.

The four-year contract with the Police and Benevolent Association Local 105 provides modest salary increases while cutting clothing allowances for parole officers not required to wear special attire to work, the administration announced.

"I appreciate the union’s membership’s ratification of an agreement that respects both the interests of the represented workers and our state’s taxpayers who also have had to adapt to difficult economic circumstances over the past years," Christie said in a written statement.